The 7 most thinly veiled songs about sex

In today’s modern world of pop music and hip hop, sex is overtly discussed with no intention of hiding the song’s true meaning under a layer of metaphors. However, go back a few decades and you’ll find plenty of artists that found creative ways to get the topic of sex onto the radio airwaves of a more repressed generation. Below are seven classic songs with a hidden meaning related to sex.

7 Madonna – Borderline
Borderline was one of Madonna’s first hits, and created at a time when she was still a little indirect about the topic of sex. On its surface, Borderline seems like a fairly innocent song about being in love. However, it doesn’t take much reading into the lyrics to guess that being pushed over the borderline is a euphemism for having an orgasm. Evidence can be found in the following lyrics:

“Stop playing with my heart, finish what you start”

“Won’t you set me free?”

“Borderline, feels like I’m going to lose my mind”

6 Frankie Goes to Hollywood – Relax
Frankie Goes to Hollywood were notorious in the 1980s for their open homosexuality. So much so, in fact, that the album was banned by BBC Radio for being obscene. Despite this fact, the song ended up becoming a #1 hit for the band. Looking at the song’s lyrics, FGtH tried to be slightly enigmatic about the song’s sexual meanings, but just barely.

“Relax, don’t do it / When you want to come”

“I’m coming / I’m coming, yeah”

“Hit me with those laser beams”

5 Wang Chung – Everybody Have Fun Tonight
This one is based on a lot of hearsay, but a fair amount of people seem to believe that “Everybody Wang Chung tonight” is code for “Everyone have an orgasm tonight.” The band has never addressed this rumor, but they have stated the name of the band (Wang Chung) can be defined as “perfect pitch.” While this doesn’t have anything to do with sex, “Everybody perfect pitch tonight” doesn’t make any more sense than the actual lyrics.

4 Warrant – Cherry Pie
If you think Warrant’s Cherry Pie is actually about a tasty fruit dessert, then you need to grow a few brain cells. Clearly, this song (which was composed on a pizza box by Jani Lane in less than 15 minutes) is all about getting it on with his special lady. Looking at the lyrics of the song, it’s one of the thinnest veiled songs about sex of all time:

“She’s my cherry pie, cool drink of water, such a sweet surprise / Tastes so good, make a grown man cry”

“Swingin’ on the front porch, on the lawn / Swingin’ where we want cause there ain’t nobody home”

3 Cyndi Lauper – She Bop
“Well they say I better get a chaperone / Because I can’t stop messing with the danger zone.” While fellow contemporaries like the Divinyls were more open on the subject (“When I think about you I touch myself”), Cyndi Lauper’s She Bop is quite obviously a song about masturbation. In interviews, Lauper has stated she wanted younger audiences to think the song was about dancing. However, anyone over the age of 12 knows the real meaning:

“I want go south and get some more”

“They say I better stop – or I’ll go blind”

2 Def Leppard – Pour Some Sugar on Me
Anytime a rock star refers to sugar, it’s probably safe to say they’re discussing sex. With lyrics like “you gotta squeeze a little, squeeze a little, tease a little more,” the true meaning of the song isn’t all that hard to decipher:

“Pour some sugar on me, ooh, in the name of love

Pour some sugar on me, c’mon fire me up

Pour your sugar on me, oh, I can’t get enough

I’m hot, sticky sweet from my head to my feet”

1 Rolling Stones – Brown Sugar
Mick Jagger has stated that the song Brown Sugar is about a combination of lewd topics, including drugs and sex. More specifically, the topics of interracial sex and slave rape are fairly obvious. Given that the song was released in 1971, it’s safe to say that a thin veil of metaphor was necessary in order to get the song on radio airwaves.

“Brown sugar, how come you taste so good / Brown sugar, just like a black girl should”

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